Janet Russell now remembers a day in late March of 1962 when she was driving north on Route 112 in Medford to see her doctor. The 22-year-old mother was pregnant with her fourth child and had a 6:30 pm appointment with her obstetrician. The road, which is now a congested artery that connects the north and south shores of Long Island, was still largely desolate at that point.
         Ms. Russell recalled that she was nearly an hour late for her doctor's appointment, but it was a lost hour she could not account for. She would not remember what occurred that night until 33 years later, when she underwent hypnotherapy, which she said allowed her to go back in her mind to the night she saw a strange light in the sky that would change her life forever.
         "I remembered being taken by creatures and examined," Ms. Russell said. "The one who was in charge, the leader, was the most handsome person I had ever seen, and looking at him straight on, he looked as human as you or me, but when I looked at him from the side, I could see he was just a hologram."
         Ms. Russell claims that shortly after her alien abduction, she gained psychic powers, which now enable her to speak to the dead, foretell the future, and see miles beyond her physical self. The 65-year-old Medford resident and her team of 20 professional mediums were recently featured during a Psychic Fair, which was held this past Monday at Violet Cove Restaurant in Mastic Beach.
         Over 50 people turned out for the fair, which was part of an event to raise money for Stephen Kyle Gmelch, Jr., a nine-month-old Mastic child, who is suffering with a series of deadly heart defects. Stephen's mother, Michelle DiGiantomasso, said she was pleased by the amount of people who showed up for the event and grateful to Ms. Russell.
         "The community has been great," Ms. DiGiantomasso said. "And Janet is terrific."
         Ms. Russell (http://janetrussellpresents.com) normally performs psychic private readings for a cost of $75 for a half hour, which includes an audiotape of the session. She said, however, that she enjoys doing charity events and never charges admission for her Psychic Fairs.
         Ms. Russell believes her clairvoyant abilities are a "gift from God" and should be shared with others. Using only her intuitions about her clients, Ms. Russell has formed a strong following of viewers to her cable access program, "Beyond The Unexplained," which appears across the nation, and locally on Channel 20.
        She has been a guest on other popular cable programs, including Channel 11's "Haunted New York." Among her credits, Ms. Russell claimed to have worked with police and investigators in helping to find 10-year-old Katie Beers, who on Dec. 28, 1992 had been kidnapped by a close family friend, John Esposito.
        "I went to the private investigator and I said, 'I know where Katie is,' " Ms. Russell recalled. "I just put my hands over a map and told them where she was, and that she had a chain around her neck."
        On Jan. 13, police found Katie alive in a secret, dungeon-like vault beneath Mr. Esposito's Bay Shore house, where she had been chained, tortured and raped for 17 days. Mr. Esposito confessed to the crime and is currently serving a sentence of 15 years to life.
        Ms. Russell said she personally nearly died of congestive heart failure in June of 1992. That near-death experience, she claimed, opened a channel for her to communicate with those in the afterlife. Christopher Maffetone, a manager at Violet Cove, said he personally witnessed Ms. Russell's ability to speak with the dead, when one of his bartenders received a surprising reading.
        "She said the person she was in contact with on the other side would have been smoking sausages at around this time of year (if he were alive)," Mr. Maffetone said. "My bartender just broke down. He said it was his grandfather, and that he always smoked sausages in the fall. He couldn't figure out how she would know that. He said there's no possible way anyone could have known that, and he was just taken aback. He was just blown away."
        Ms. Russell claims, as well, to have predicted the TWA Flight 800 tragedy, in which a Boeing 747 bound for Paris, exploded shortly after takeoff from Kennedy Airport on July 17, 1996, killing all 230 people on board. The local psychic said she not only predicted the explosion, but also asserts to have actually witnessed the jet plummet in the ocean off the coast of Fire Island. Ms. Russell is among several witnesses on the ground, who reported seeing a bright object "streaking" towards the 747, and believes the jumbo jet was deliberately shot out of the sky by terrorists.
        "I was just relaxing on the beach when it happened," she said. "I was there, and I know what I saw. I have no doubt that it was a missile that blew up the plane."
        Just a few weeks before September 2001, Ms. Russell had been visiting the World Trade Center in Manhattan. She said she suddenly felt a great sense of danger while standing in one of the massive towers, and warned a man in the building that the structure was not safe, and fled from the building.
        The psychic also claims to have a souvenir from her alien abduction over 40 years ago. A thin cylindrical, one-inch long bump in her upper right arm is an implant that had been inserted by the mysterious creatures, she said. Ms. Russell maintained that her daughter, Elizabeth Anne Russell-Day, whom she was pregnant with at the time of the alleged abduction, has a similar implant lodged in her leg. Ms. Russell said her daughter also retains the same psychic abilities.
        "I feel I'm successful because I am an honest person," Ms. Russell added. "I don't make these things up. They're things that happened to me, and I've been given a gift, and feel I should give back to the community."

This article was originally printed in the 12/16/05 edition of THE PRESS of Center Moriches.

Janet Russell's Web site is http:// janetrussellpresents.com. You can view her listing on Earth Star's Psychic Readers page at: http://www.earthstarpublications.com/readings.html.